Monkton Elm Garden and Pet Centre is pulling out all the stops to celebrate 30 years of trading, by inviting children to come and paint a giant terracotta '30' and donating tree saplings to worthy causes.


The Somerset-based garden centre will be opening its doors to local schoolchildren during the half term holiday (February 11-19) for free sessions of terracotta tile painting. The end result will feature a huge, colourful 30 made from a mosaic of the children's tiles, which will go on display during the centre's 30 weeks of celebration from March.

The family-run garden centre's general manager Norma Moore said: "The display will be unveiled for our anniversary launch week on Saturday, March 10 by the garden centre's owners David and Luella Bellman. The tiles will then be on show until September."

Another part of the celebrations involves the offer of free tree saplings to schools, charities, village organisations and community groups. There are a total of 2,012 small, young trees waiting to be planted and the business is looking to contribute them to any projects being run in the community.

Plant manager Andrew Pitman said: "We operated similar schemes in 2010 and 2011 that were incredibly successful so once again we're inviting anyone who feels that their school, charity or group is deserving of the saplings to get in touch.

"We do have a limited number of trees and are allocating them on a first come, first served basis so we urge people to submit their requests as soon as possible. The closing date for requests is 5pm on Friday, February 24."

The trees, known as whips, are to be given away in groups of 50-100 and are all indigenous British varieties. They are designed to be planted together as hedging or creating a small woodland area.

All interested applicants are asked to write to Mr Pitman at the garden centre giving details of their project and reasons why they think they deserve to receive a group of saplings.

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